Come fellow traveler and travel though the portals of time. Come with me back to a time when the world was a simple place. A time of answering machines, MC Hammer and CD walkmen. Come my friends to the early 90’s, to the time of… (insert dramatic orchestra swell and echo effect) No Internet!

I know it’s hard to believe that one could even survive such a trip, but trust me, I’ve been there and back and lived to tell the tale. The first morning I awoke in this bizzare past I found one house mate reading a book and the other playing the piano. It seemed as though we had traveled back an entire century in just one night. Would we be playing parlor games this evening I wondered?

The installation date wasn’t for a week so I began to wonder what we could accomplish in this time free of the burdens of email and YouTube featured videos. Maybe we could learn to ride a unicycle, speak with a perfect New Zeland accent or drive a car on two wheels like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Twins. All worthy endeavors that could be accomplished easily without the nuisance of the attention demanding internet.

Alas, it was not to be. For a life without the internet is but a half life. A life spent in coffee shops for hours using someone else’s internet. It’s like sleeping in someone else’s bed. It’s better than no bed at all, but it still smells like someone else. It’s a life spent desperately trying to find other technology to fill the void. A whole night spent trying to see if T9 input is really better than multi-tap.

Another night spent trying to have a “conversation.” Just minutes into each attempt, I would find myself referring to a YouTube video. With no ability to show said video, the conversation would just become a description of that video. I realized 99% of everything I currently think about revolves around a YouTube video. The night degraded into some perverse group therapy where each member would bring up a classic YouTube that everyone knew, while the rest of the group would laugh and agree how funny that video was.

What did I do most of the time in 1993? I remember being there surely. Was it something involving the outdoors? I suppose I spent most of my time in school being educated in all sorts of subjects that are entirely unrelated to YouTube.

There are few people without the internet nowadays. Almost any village on the globe, even ones with using wooden plows to eke their living out of the Earth are online. The current young generation will not know life without the internet. I can only hope for their sake that when they have to change internet accounts, Time Warner has a faster turn around time than a week.

I awoke this morning anticipating the arrival of the van with the ladder on top. It was kinda like Christmas morning. I now sit happily with my internet looking out the window at the beautiful spring day. It’s inspiring. It’s inspiring me to look up some good spring weather videos on YouTube.